Rapid and Low Cost Toxin Analysis for Shellfish Food Safety

Giner's goal in this project is to address the USDA's Strategic Plan Goal 1.6: "Reduce the incidence of food-borne illness and provide a safer food supply" by developing a rapid, portable and inexpensive sensor device capable of detecting shellfish toxins before they are consumed. Fully developed, this technology will provide an easy-to-use and field-ready sensor instrument for accurate monitoring of shellfish toxins that would be beneficial to U.S. consumer health, industrial shellfishing, and regulating agencies.The overall objective of this proposed Phase I program is to demonstrate an electrochemical assay for detection of okadaic and domoic acid food toxins in shellfish extracts with accuracy equivalent to traditional LC-MS and ELISA methods. This will be accomplished by achieving the following Phase I technical objectives:Development and synthesis of OA and DA aptamers.Modification of SPEs with these aptamers to develop a novel electrochemical assay.Testing the assay with shellfish reference extracts and validating accuracy by benchmarking against the standard methods